Page 49 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

‘A Scrabble festival?’

‘Yes, a big Scrabble-themed gathering over an entire weekend. A tournament would be the main event, but there’d be informal games for less serious players too. Refreshments, of course. A craft room too.’

‘A craft room? What’s that got to do with Scrabble?’

Jo unbuttoned her jacket and revealed a necklace she’d purchased from Etsy, which spelled out her full name, Joanne, in letter tiles. She hadn’t wanted to choose Joanne – she never used her full name – but having only two letters had looked a bit silly.

‘People make bracelets too and sometimes pictures for the wall.’

‘I see. Great idea. So where do we come in? Do you want us to tell the children about it? Try and get some families involved?’

‘I was rather hoping you’d let us use the school.’

‘The school?’

Jo tried to read his expression. It wasn’t a definite no, but he wasn’t blown away by the idea either.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, sitting up in his chair and picking up his pen. ‘You’d like to hire the school for an entire weekend.’

‘Well, I was hoping… that it might be…’

‘Here’s our pricing.’ He rummaged in a desk drawer and pulled out a laminated piece of card. He pushed it across the desk towards her, and Jo saw it was printed with hourly rates.

‘That’s way more than we could afford.’

‘How much could you afford?’

‘We haven’t got much of a budget.’ She paused. ‘Well, to be honest, we haven’t got a budget at all. I was hoping that we could do this… as some kind of… joint venture?’

‘A joint venture. What’s in it for us?’

He tapped his fingers on the desk. Jo took this as a sign he wanted to get rid of her and began to speak faster now, trying to get as many words out as possible in the hope of persuading him. Mentally, she ran down the list of points she’d made: reasons why the school should agree to this.

‘Well, as I said, it’d be great for the community. And for your reputation. Other schools would think how innovative it was.’

She glanced at him. He wasn’t buying it.

‘And money,’ she continued. ‘We’d need to recoup our costs, but any profit we make, the school can keep.’

She should have checked this first with Ras.

‘The PTA already have an active programme of fundraising events,’ said Mr Morgan.

She had one last card to play. If this didn’t persuade him, nothing would.

‘Scrabble is very educational. There could be all sorts of word-based activities. We’d have a children’s zone with Junior Scrabble games for younger participants. Could be the perfect thing for kids like Alfred.’

20

Tuesday morning. As the train left the Pennines behind and sped – well, bit of an exaggeration – towards Manchester, Jo got her Filofax out. For once, she’d been lucky enough to bag herself a table seat so she could go through all the plans for the festival.

She had a long to do list with only the first item – venue – crossed off.

Second item – although not actually on the list: tell Ras the good news. They had a venue for the festival.

Next, she needed to look into how to go about running a tournament. There were, she’d discovered after some googling, regular Scrabble tournaments across the whole country – how had she never found this out before? – and some hardcore players who spent their weekends travelling to each and every one. Perhaps she’d join their ranks after the festival.

The list went on. To anyone else, it might have been daunting, having so much to do on top of their day job, but Jo felt confident that she could manage it. Not only confident, but excited.